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How exactly should we pray for those who have so badly mistreated us? There’s a natural response, and then there’s a supernatural response that Jesus calls us to.
In the New Testament, the Greek word for “bless” is eulogeo. The prefix eu- means “good” and the root logos is “word.” So, in the New Testament context in which we now live, to bless someone literally means to say good words both to them and about them. So when Jesus tells us, “Bless those who curse you and pray for those who mistreat you,” He is telling us to say good words to them, and to say good words about them in prayer to our Heavenly Father. …
Commenting on Psalm 109:4, my friend Kevin Berry said, “While they accuse me like satan, I will pray for them like Jesus.” This is the highest level of Christian maturity: To pray like Jesus did for those who insulted Him, slandered Him, and crucified Him, “Father, forgive them for they don’t understand what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
I truly believe that When Sheep Bite will be a healing resource for shepherd leaders who are still feeling the pain of their latest sheep bite. Please pick up a copy today!
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Gratitude is our shield against the negativity, and gratitude is also our sword against the ambushers. But using these pieces of our armor is exhausting, which means we also need a way to recover from the attacks of negativity.
Jesus began His public ministry with a sermon that prompted Luke to record that “everyone spoke well of Him.” But in less than 60 seconds, after Jesus outlined how His ministry would unfold, Jesus is being criticized to the point where those same praising people are now ready to throw Jesus off a cliff (Luke 4:18-29)!
Elbert Hubbard wrote, “If you have something others don’t, know something others don’t, or do something others aren’t doing, then, rest assured, you will be criticized. … To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, and be nothing.”
Even though Hubbard is probably right, Christians don’t have the option to “say nothing, do nothing, be nothing,” because Jesus has called us to go into all the world, preach the Good News, and be salt and light. That means we will be victims of criticism. We can use our shield and sword of gratitude, but we are also going to need some medicine to help us recover too.
“Sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is a lie. Words do hurt.
Jesus told us these stinging words would be thrown at us like sticks and stones in Luke 6:22. When we are criticized, we have to be careful not to get embittered. How does that happen? We are naturally self-protective, so criticized people become critical and cynical unless they can be healed and have joy restored.If we hold on to our hurts, bitterness can fester in our hearts (Hebrews 12:14-15).
Look at David in Psalm 69. He acknowledged the attacks from his enemies and how it made him feel, but then he applies the healing medicine of gratitude—
But as for me, afflicted and in pain—may Your salvation, God, protect me. I will praise God’s name in song and glorify Him with thanksgiving. (Psalm 69:29-30)
Our healing is in our thanking!
Medical research has shown that gratitude improves physical health—it reduces stress and resets the heart’s healthy rhythm. This is just as true spiritually: gratitude is our medicine.
You may be thinking, “How can I bless critical people? How can I be grateful when I’m surrounded by such hostility?”
David also wrote Psalm 23 for us. This is the psalm that begins, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not be in want.” But notice especially the words of verse 5: “You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows.”
It is precisely in the presence of enemies that God invites us to abide with Him and to receive His medicine of anointing. But I also see that our Good Shepherd doesn’t just give us adequate blessings, but overflowing blessings—enough for me and more to share with those around me.
In the New Testament Greek, one word for “bless” is eulogeo which literally means “good words.” Jesus, Paul, and Peter all tell us that when we are victims of the sticks and stones of negative words, we are to respond by saying good words both to God and to those who are hurling evil words at us (Matthew 5:43-44; 1 Corinthians 4:12; 1 Peter 3:9).
Peter shows us exactly how Jesus did this when He was hanging on the Cross and enduring the sneers, mocking words, and insults from those surrounding Him (1 Peter 2:21-23; Luke 23:35-39). Instead of throwing evil words back at them, Jesus blessed them by saying, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing” (Luke 23:34).
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Of all the things that rob a Christian of peace and robust mental health, stress has to be near the top of the list. There are so many stressors in our lives that to not find a way to actively de-stress is to choose to remain stressed. This is sort of like fertilizing the weeds, as we learned in our second mental health strategy.
A certain amount of stress is good for us—doctors call this eustress. Our bodies have been designed by God with a hormone called cortisol that helps us respond to stressful situations, and He also designed that the unused cortisol be flushed from our bodies as we sleep and exercise. However, when we become stressed, many times sleep and exercise are squeezed out of our lives.
Men’s Health magazine reported, “You personally may dictate when you’ll die. After studying 1633 men for 30 years, Purdue scientists found that worrying takes 16 years off your life. Negative thinking triggers the release of cortisol, a stress hormone that can be dangerous when elevated for long periods of time.”
The eustress can degrade into distress if we’re not attentive to this downward slide. The excess cortisol that is allowed to remain in our bodies leads to unhealthy responses—like sleeplessness, starvation or binge eating, and little to no exercise. These unhealthy factors are further exacerbated by our diminished coping skills that come from the damage done to the hippocampus in our brain. Lingering cortisol kills the neurons in this memory center of our brains, which makes it harder for us to recall past lessons that could help us resolve stress.
Sadly, distress can become its own downward cycle as the unhealthy responses and diminished coping skills negatively impact our lives, creating even more stressors.
Stress makes us:
Self-focused
Short-sighted
Stingy with our time, possessions, and even God’s promises
But there is a word of hope for us. William James noted, “The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.”
I want to give you one thought—one word, one action—to combat stress: Bless.
Blessing others takes the focus off myself. Blessing God puts the focus on Him.
In the Gospels, we see people who had suffered the ravages of stress, encounter Jesus, find freedom, and then begin to bless others as a preventative to returning to their stress-filled lives. We can see a few examples in healed women, a man delivered from demons, and a woman who had lived a less-than-virtuous life (Luke 8:1-3, 26-39; 7:36-50).
Frequently, the Old Testament psalmists shared how blessing God and others brought them out of their stressful situations. A great example comes from David when he chose to bless God in a stressful place, and ended up being a blessing to other afflicted people around him (Psalm 34:1-6).
Instead of remaining self-focused we become others-focused
Instead of being short-sighted we get a big-picture orientation
Instead of being stingy with our possessions and God’s promises we become generous
Remember that in the distress cycle I mentioned earlier the brain cells in the hippocampus were being damaged? The excess cortisol literally kills those neurons. The good news is that the hippocampus is one of the few places in the brain that experiences neurogenesis after cortisol is flushed. When you replace stressing with blessing, and the cortisol is regularly flushed from your body, brain cells are regenerated in your hippocampus. In essence, you are developing both a new brain and a new mind.
The apostle Paul wrote, “Put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:22-24 NKJV).
Don’t let stress steal life from your years and years from your life. De-stress by blessing God and blessing those around you.
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I’m a bit of a nut about the exactness of words, so one of my pet peeves is the incorrect use of imply and infer. “Imply” is something I do as the speaker; “infer” is something you do as the listener. Or you might say implying is like throwing and inferring is like catching.
A big problem arises when I infer something that you didn’t imply. Or even worse, when I infer something based on something you didn’t say. People will often say something like this, “Since Jesus didn’t specifically talk about ________ then it must be okay.” In logic, this would be called an argument from ignorance: concluding that an action must be acceptable because it has not been specifically stated to be unacceptable.
Statement #10 in our series asking “Is that in the Bible?” is—Love your neighbor. Is that in the Bible? Yes!
Later on, Jesus would add to this Deuteronomy 6:5—Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength—to answer the question about the greatest commandment of all.
In Leviticus 19, the Hebrew word for love means love in the broadest sense of the word, and neighbor means a friend or a fellow citizen. Unfortunately, the rabbis inferred that someone not a Jew was therefore an enemy and therefore not worthy of love. They further inferred that the opposite of love was hate.
Matthew Henry commented, “They were willing to infer what God never designed.”
Statement #11 is—Hate your enemy. Is that in the Bible? Yes, in the fact that it appears in print in Matthew 5:43, but it doesn’t appear in the Scripture that Jesus knew. It had become so ingrained in the thinking of people that they now assumed it was in the Bible.
In many ways, the Old Testament laws were easier to live out because they were all external and easy to measure, like don’t murder or don’t sleep with someone who isn’t your spouse. But Jesus made it a heart issue—He said lust is the same as adultery and hate is the same as murder.
Jesus also made love for enemies a heart issue. The word He used for love in the Greek is agape—the same word describing God’s love for His enemies in John 3:16—For God so LOVED the world, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him would not perish but would have everlasting life.
Jesus said our enemies were really our neighbors and were worthy of sacrificial love because they, too, were loved by God.
Matthew 5:44 is shortened in the NIV and has a footnote explaining that the longer verse was not seen in the earlier manuscripts. But given the fact that Jesus demonstrated everything found in the longer version of this verse, I think we are safe in using it. So let’s look at the response Jesus calls us to from the NKJV: But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you.
Here’s what Jesus says it means for us to love our enemies:
(2) Help the haters. Jesus said we are to do those things that are beautiful and excellent—like the Good Samaritan did for his enemy-turned-neighbor (see Luke 10:25-37).
(3) Pray for the persecutors. Talk to God about them; don’t talk to others about them.
This response from Christians toward people whom others would call an enemy is totally unexpected by the world. This unexpected response will begin to draw enemies toward Jesus (1 Peter 2:12). If we will treat enemies and neighbors, they may soon become brothers and sisters in the family of God!
When the world hits us Christians out of hate, let’s respond with unexpected love: blessing those who curse us, helping those who hurt us, and praying for those who persecute us.
This is a weekly series with things I’m reading and pondering from Oswald Chambers. You can read the original seed thought here, or type “Thursdays With Oswald” in the search box to read more entries.
Getting The Order Right
Beware of walking in the spiritual life according to your natural affinities. We all have natural affinities—some people we like and others we do not; some people we get on well with and others we do not. Never let those likes and dislikes be the rule of your Christian life. “If we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” [1 John 1:7], i.e., God gives us fellowship with people for whom we have no natural affinity. …
Our example is not a good man, not even a Christian man, but God Himself. We do not allow the big surprise of this to lay hold of us sufficiently. Jesus nowhere says, “Follow your Father which is in heaven—that you may be good men? that you may be lovable to all men?” No, “that you may be the children of your Father which is in heaven” [Matthew 5:44-45], and that implies a strong family likeness to Jesus Christ. …
It takes a long time to get the full force of our Lord’s statements. “I say unto you, love your enemies”—an easy thing to do when you have no enemies; an impossible thing when you have. “Bless them that curse you”—easy when no one is cursing you, but impossible when someone is. “Do good to them that hate you, and pray for them that despitefully use you.” It seems easy to do all this when we have no enemies, when no one is cursing or persecuting us; but if we have an enemy who slanders and annoys and systematically vexes us, and we read Jesus Christ’s statement “I say to you, Love your enemies”—how are we going to do it? Unless Jesus Christ can remake us within, His teaching is the biggest mockery human ears ever listened to. …
“I say unto you, love your enemies.” Jesus does not say, “Love every one.” The Bible never speaks vaguely, it always speaks definitely. People speak about loving “mankind,” and loving “the heathen”; Jesus says, “Love your enemies.” Our Lord does not say, “Bless your enemies,” He says, “Love your enemies.” He does not say, “Love them that curse you”; He says, “Bless them that curse you.” “Do good to them that hate you”—not bless them. He does not say, “Do good to them that despitefully use you”; He says, “Pray for them that despitefully use you.” Each one of these commands is stamped with sheer impossibility to the natural man. If we reverse the order Jesus has given it can be done with strain, but in His order I defy any man on earth to be able to do it unless he has been regenerated by God the Holy Ghost. When a man does love his enemies, he knows that God has done a tremendous work in him, and everyone else knows it too.
From Studies In The Sermon On The Mount
It’s impossible to do what Jesus commands if we’re trying to do it solely in our own strength. But when we allow the Holy Spirit to remake us from within, we can do what Jesus says:
If someone is your enemy—love them.
If someone persecutes you—pray for them.
If someone curses you—bless them.
If someone hates you—do good to them.
When we operate this way, we know that God has made this possible in us—and everyone else knows it too!
Christians are citizens of Heaven who are merely passing through Earth, so this isn’t a Christian’s final home. Because of this, it’s not unusual for Earthlings to mistreat, insult, and even persecute these “aliens and strangers.”
How are Christians supposed to respond to this?
First off, let’s make sure the persecution is for the right reason. Jesus said, “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of Me” (Matthew 5:11).
Jesus also told us that this persecution has a blessing in it: we would be able to share our faith in Jesus Christ at the highest levels on Earth: “On account of Me you will stand before governors and kings as witnesses to them” (Mark 13:9).
In 1 Peter 3:8, the apostle tells us how to live with everyone, Christian and Earthling alike:
Harmoniously—keep The Main Thing the main thing; don’t get caught up in petty arguments
Empathetically—put yourself in others’ shoes
Kindly—treat everyone like a sibling that shares the same parents with you
Compassionately—be strong enough to handle other people’s stuff
Courteously—remember this: manners matter!
This list may be easy to live out when people are friendly to you, but what about when unfriendly Earthlings are downright mean to you? In the very next verse Peter gives us two Don’ts and one Do:
Don’t repay evil with evil—Jesus is our example of this (see 1 Peter 2:21-23)
Don’t insult the insulters—treat others as you want them to treat you (Luke 6:31)
Do bless those who slander and persecute you—Jesus says we get absolutely no credit if we only treat kind people kindly (see Luke 6:32-33)
In Psalm 35 David is dealing with people who are fighting against him. They are saying mean things and trying to do even meaner things. This prayer shows both God’s part and our part…
God’s part—defend me against the evildoers … remind me of Your salvation … pursue those who are falsely pursuing me … stay close to me.
My part—listen to God’s voice of assurance … live quietly … don’t give others cause to mistreat me … pray for those who persecute me … continually turn my thoughts and praise to God.
Peter wraps up this thought with these words—Who is going to harm you if you are eager to do good? But even it you should suffer for what is right, you are blessed (1 Peter 3:13-14).
Don’t give in to mistreatment and lash out in anger. Trust God to handle things. Keep on living a good life that is focused on bringing God all the glory due His name!
I love the story in 2 Kings about the widow who comes to Elisha for help. Elisha tells her to borrow as many empty jars as she can, and then begin to pour the little oil she has remaining in her own jar into all the empty jars.
Miraculously, her one little jar fills all of the empty jars she had borrowed! It was only after the empty jars had been filled that her jar of oil stopped pouring. When she sold the full jars of oil, she was able to pay off her debts and have enough left over to take care of her and her sons.
We always have something.
In our eyes our something may appear as nothing. The widow originally told Elisha, “I don’t have a thing. Except a tiny bit of oil.”
But if God has given you something, that something is everything you need.
Your something is everything to you, and it’s a blessing to others too.
What do you have to do with your something? Pour it out on those who have nothing.
For how long? Until all the places of nothing are full. Once all the nothing is filled with something, you can stop.
And then what? Then you will find that your something with God’s blessing is everything you need!
God has given you something that those with nothing need. So perhaps a good prayer for all of us is—God, show me today what something You have given to me, and where You want me to pour my something into someone’s nothing.
There are two ways of dealing with any undesirable things around you: You can curse the darkness or light a candle. Nowhere in the Bible does Jesus say, “Tell bad people how bad they are.” Instead, He tells His followers to love … bless … serve … SHINE …
I suppose you could choose to curse…
There’s too much pollution
Respect is no longer seen
Politicians are crooked
Newspapers only report bad news
Too many marriages end in divorce
My kid’s teacher is never available
People hide behind Facebook and email
My church is boring
Halloween is dark and scary
Or you can SHINE…
Pick up one piece of trash … recycle your metal and plastic …
Write a thank-you note to your local police chief …
Run for office yourself … volunteer for a politician you believe in … be an informed voter …
Do something newsworthy … use social media to only highlight good news …
Date your mate … have dinner with another married couple …
Volunteer in a classroom … send an encouraging email to a teacher …
Take some cookies to your neighbor … send a handwritten note to a friend …
Start praising before you go to church … get involved in a ministry …
Craig T. Owens 